Tre-Owen

Tre-Owen

Despite the mutilation of its south front, where the multi-gabled top was removed, the house remains an awe-inspiring structure. The south front and its east return are of ashlar, while the rest is coursed rubble, with stone slate roofs throughout. The plan is strictly rectangular on an east-west axis, facing south, over 25 metres long and 15 metres deep. It is divided axially by a spine wall incorporating three chimney stacks, plus a spiral stair at the west end. When first built, both the front and rear elevations were three-and-a-half storeys high and symmetrical, each with four gables and three chimney stacks rising from the valley between the roofs. The east and west ends were twin-gabled.

The now two-storeyed south front has four windows. String-courses link the hoodmoulds of the windows, which are uniformly large and square, of four lights with a central transom and ovolo-moulded mullions. In the centre, slightly overlapping the windows to its right, is a two-storey gabled porch in a florid but inaccurate Renaissance style, eloquent of the social ambitions of its builder and the artistic limitations of his mason. This has a moulded Tudor-arched doorway with solecistic imposts, framed by unorthodox pedestalled pairs of columns with an enriched entablature including prominent moulded cornices which carry round. Above this, the upper floor has a mantled and helmeted armorial shield with many quarterings, flanked by barbaric terms, framed in similar fashion but on a reduced scale, with pairs of columns bearing shared capitals apparently intended to be Ionic. Then comes a transomed three-light window, and above that a gable filled with a strapwork pattern.

The west elevation has a Tudor-arched doorway offset slightly left of centre, opening onto a lobby-entry to the main service rooms, above which is a stack of four two-light mullioned stairwindows and a one-light window at the top, lighting a spiral staircase incorporated in the kitchen chimney stack. To right and left of these, the gable-ends of the front and rear ranges each have mullioned windows of four, four and three lights on successive floors, finishing with a two-light attic window. All these mullioned windows have hoodmoulds and ovolo-moulded mullions. The east elevation, reflecting the superior status of the east end of the house, has large four-light transomed windows to the two main floors, a transomed three-light window to the second floor of the rear range and a two-light attic window. The rebuilt gable of the front range has a three-light mullioned window to the second floor. To the left of the main windows of the rear range are one-light closet windows.

The rear is very regularly fenestrated, with four mullioned windows to each floor: of four lights to the first two levels, three to the third, and two to the attic gables. The only break in this regularity is a Tudor-arched back doorway immediately to the left of the third ground-floor window.

The overwhelming characteristic of the interior is its large scale, with very high ceilings to the two main floors and a staircase of gigantic proportions. The ground floor of the front range reflects the sub-medieval plan of the larger vernacular farmhouse, with a hall separated from the kitchen by a service room, while the rear range provides a parlour, a staircase hall and a rear kitchen. The hall is now almost featureless except for ceiling beams and a rear-wall fireplace, but it formerly had a screens passage at the lower end leading from the front entrance to a doorway through to the staircase. The screen was removed to Llanarth Court in 1898 but has recently been re-acquired for restoration to its original position. The service end partition is of stud-and-plank construction in two tiers, the same panelling forming a small square service room and a passage leading through to a very large kitchen with a large rectangular fireplace in its rear wall and a lobby in the corner to the left providing access to an oak-block spiral stair, which rises to the full height of the building, and to a large back-kitchen.

To the rear of the east end of the hall is a parlour, known as the Oak Room, which is fully wainscotted with muntin-and-rail panelling and has a Tudor-arched fireplace with a moulded surround and a Renaissance architrave with enriched overmantel, and a strapwork plaster ceiling. To the rear of the west end of the hall is the great staircase, the earliest open well staircase in the county, which has massive newels with exorbitantly large pendants and finials, turned balusters of inverted vase form, and a very heavy moulded handrail. Above the hall, and of the same dimensions, is a great chamber known as the Drawing Room, which has a Tudor-arched fireplace with moulded surround and most of a moulded plaster ceiling with a large central pendant and interwoven enriched bands enclosing unusual tapering panels with cusped ends and fleur-de-lys and foliated finials. Several other rooms on both upper floors have rectangular fireplaces, but few other original features. Bathrooms and other modern facilities have been installed in the rear range.